A HUGE high street chain with 720 locations across the UK has shared the news that it is closing its doors.
The shop is part of a series of closures which have devastated Hanley’s high street in Stoke on Trent.
Holland & Barrett is one of the UK’s leading health stores and is known for selling a range of vitamins, vegan food and beauty products.
However, in increasingly hostile high street conditions, the brand’s Henley branch has chosen to relocate.
The new store will be opening in The Potteries Centre and will open in mid-March.
They also have stores in Tretham Shopping Village and Affinity Staffordshire.
Ahead of the move, Holland & Barret said: “We can confirm we will be closing H&B Hanley later next month and opening our new, bigger and better store in The Potteries Centre.
“We are delighted to be opening a larger store with an even wider range of products and an increased store team of experts to support the community on their wellness journeys.
“We look forward to welcoming our customers from our Hanley store soon.”
The closure of the Hanley shop marks another big brand leaving the high street.
Travel company TUI left Market Square after 31 years in 2024, with locals saying that their departure was the “end of an era”.
Shoezone closed their Hanley store in April 2024, leading one resident to say that the area was becoming a “ghost town”.
Why are retailers closing shops?
EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline.
The Sun’s business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors.
In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping.
Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open.
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury’s hike to employer NICs from April 2025, will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
At the same time, the minimum wage will rise to £12.21 an hour from April, and the minimum wage for people aged 18-20 will rise to £10 an hour, an increase of £1.40.
In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.
The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing.
Retail parks are increasingly popular with shoppers, who want to be able to get easy, free parking at a time when local councils have hiked parking charges in towns.
Many retailers including Next and Marks & Spencer have been shutting stores on the high street and taking bigger stores in better-performing retail parks instead.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Carpetright, Debenhams, Dorothy Perkins, Paperchase, Ted Baker, The Body Shop, Topshop and Wilko to name a few.
What’s increasingly common is when a chain goes bust a rival retailer or private equity firm snaps up the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.
They may go on to open a handful of stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely ever as many stores or in the same places.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
One shopper even said: “It’s all over.”
USC also left Hanley’s high street, in April 2024, in another blow to the Staffordshire town.
According to a report by the Centre for Retail Research, an average of 37 high street shops closed every day across the UK in 2024.
Footfall fell by 2.2 per cent from 2023 meaning far fewer shoppers headed to the high street.
Sadly, 11,341 of the closures were independent retailers.
The Centre for Retail Research has warned that “worse is set to come in 2025”.
